Sunday, 9 September 2012

Every September the E17 Art Trail descends on Walthamstow
in East London. This annual event connects the dots between the scattered
creatives of the local area, inviting us to view the diverse work of over 3,500
professional and amateur artists.

Whilst galleries, studios, shopfronts and sheds from
Blackhorse Road to Wood Street have been seized for artistic subversion,
perhaps the most fun can be had in visiting the many artists who are exhibiting
from their homes. There’s no curatorial
agenda and so there is a delightful chaos in wandering from the little flat of
an elderly amateur painter of floral watercolours to view the smart graphic
work of the professional illustrator just across the street. In giving equal opportunities to creative
endeavours from artists all backgrounds there are some genuine surprises to be
found, regardless of whether you favour high concept artistic intervention or
wholly unironic paintings of unicorns and fairies.

My highlights included professional illustrator Matt Richard’s
audio-visual project, Musical Views, which featured crisp graphic portraits of local musicians
alongside recordings with their sitters.

Richard’s digital drawings are rendered to capture an analog printed
feel that neatly suited their subject.
His commercial work, also on display inside, was very strong in itself
and so it was heartening to see that he had entered into the local spirit of
the trail with his street installation.

I was also energised by the enthusiastic painterly
adventures of David Bryan’s Inspiration Comes Tomorrow. Bryan had been inspired to exhibit as part of
the trail by a neighbour and had set himself the goal to putting together this
exhibition of selected works in acrylic, oils, printing and photography. He is clearly enjoying the challenge and was
a buoyant host as he led us round his journey as an artist. Like so many others on the trail, he wasn’t
pitching himself as a fully formed professional but rather he was openly
inviting us into his world through his journey into art. He had a colourful energetic flair and I
liked his woodcuts, prints and mixed media work that had somewhat of an Eastern
feel, so I’ll forgive him for siding against me on the oil versus acrylic
debate.

Along the way, there is also enough room for the quirky and
crafty. The Made in Stow letterbox
cinema is a cute conceptual installation that reimagines movie classics as if
they were filmed in Walthamstow. These
are screened in a literal letterbox format (above).

Meanwhile, the Back to Front project along Wingfield Road has sponsored
residents to print large front window hoardings of any image they choose to
represent themselves or their families – collaborating on an open air gallery
that includes everything from Frank Sinatra to “the frog from our garden”.

Idiosyncratic personal obsessions are a running theme, with
last years’ Tears of Blood (above) being one of my all time favourites. With very little explanation, a resident
artist had exhibited a small collection of photoshopped images of giant cats
crying tears of blood across picturesque landscapes. When we arrived his house was busy with
visitors and our host expressed genuine bemusement at his popularity. “But…”, I tried to explain as if it was the
most obvious thing in the world, “you’ve made images of giant cats…crying tears
of blood…across picturesque landscapes!” Perhaps this says more about me than
him.

The artworks here are not without teeth in other
respects. Notable inclusions this year
included some worrying psychedelic portraits of local homeless people and a sculpture
that invoked the notorious ‘milk-snatching’ of former Tory Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher in a witty commentary on more recent Conservative Government
cuts. Both of these are exhibited at the
little Vestry Museum which was also screening a series of short films; a
diversion I was denied by my slight hearing issues and the fact it was one
darkened room too many for one of the hottest days of the year.

More traditional craftsmanship can be found at the E17
Designers Market in the Asian Centre or at The Penny Fielding Gallery, where –
among other things - the incredible and diverse leatherwork of saddler Mia Sabel is on display.

Just across the road from here you can find the unofficial
mascot of the trail in Carl Harris’ Catboy.
His Catboy series of drawings and prints are lively and joyfully
energetic. Originally, the boy with a
cat for a shadow had only his titular feline companion to share in his
adventures, but over the last year the daydreaming protagonist has adopted a
bear and circus monkey into his fantasy menagerie. Harris is something of an Art Trail success
story with the Catboy’s charm proving as infectious as his own.

More pictures from a story yet to be written are on display
in Amy McSimpson’s…er…Pictures From a Story Yet to be Written. Her quirky illustrated characters dance
playfully from the walls, the small collaged images offering a fractured
glimpse into a captivating little world yet to be explored. McSimpson is sharing an exhibition space with
Sharon Drew, whose New Paintings are colourful, luscious and assured
abstraction of the type I really like but people don’t seem to make so much
anymore. They were also notably generous
with their time and their refreshments.

Finally, we spent a little time with Some Easons and a Bergman,
which was truly a family affair, collecting the prints, paintings and crisp
medium format photography of the eponymous extended family. The medium format prints from a selection of
vintage cameras are as good a reason as any to never touch the Hipstamatic
again and they also had one of my favourite titles of the day – the (child
friendly) Sir-Mix-A-Lot referencing, ‘I Like Big Hats and I Cannot Lie’.

It’s hard not to be drawn into the local narrative as you
stumble from one little social gathering to the next, sharing recommendations
and anecdotes – although with growing caution as you realise everyone seems to
know each other. This event showcases
the strength of the community as much as the painters, poets, sculptors,
knitters, makers and do-ers who line the route.
Many of the people we spoke to only got to know their neighbours through
the event. Whilst most of the work we
saw was for sale, we never once felt like we were being given a sales pitch,
instead people were welcoming and generous with their time and – in some cases
– their wine. We talked about community,
art, the pain of losing the joy of swearing once having children, the various
techniques of living room art installation, children’s book illustrations, the
aesthetics of dragons and a great deal of technical camera porn.

Community art events of this nature are often exclusively
niche – whether in the form of self-congratulatory urban hipster art markets or
timid rural village fetes. What the E17
Art Trail achieves by being so genuinely inclusive is that it becomes honestly
engaging and relevant outside of the postcode. In placing creativity at the
heart of the community, it celebrates the essential role that art can plays in
our ability to communicate, to relate and to socialise.

The E17 Art Trail continues until the 16th September. You can read more about the event on the official website, where you can also download an app to plan your personal trail. We only saw a fraction of the exhibited work but there is a very interesting blog project that spotlights some of the artists here.

Mat is a sporadic maker of art, troubler of words and regularly finds himself entangled in miscellaneous quixotic creative ventures.His website is currently on a period of extended leave but you can follow his occasionally troubling stream of consciousness on Twitter.